The Kama Sutra is an ancient Indian Sanskrit text on sexuality, eroticism and emotional fulfillment in life. Attributed to Vātsyāyana, The Kama Sutra is neither exclusively nor predominantly a sex manual on sex positions, but rather was written as a guide to the art of living well, the nature of love, finding a life partner, maintaining one's love life, and other aspects pertaining to pleasure-oriented faculties of human life. It is a sutra-genre text with terse aphoristic verses that have survived into the modern era with different bhāṣyas. The text is a mix of prose and anustubh-meter poetry verses. The text acknowledges the Hindu concept of Purusharthas, and lists desire, sexuality, and emotional fulfillment as one of the proper goals of life. Its chapters discuss methods for courtship, training in the arts to be socially engaging, finding a partner, flirting, maintaining power in a married life, when and how to commit adultery, sexual positions, and other topics. The majority of the book is about the philosophy and theory of love, what triggers desire, what sustains it, and how and when it is good or bad.
Sex manuals are books which explain how to perform sexual practices; they also commonly feature advice on birth control, and sometimes on safe sex and sexual relationships.
The Masters and Johnson research team, composed of William H. Masters and Virginia E. Johnson, pioneered research into the nature of human sexual response and the diagnosis and treatment of sexual disorders and dysfunctions from 1957 until the 1990s.
Mammary intercourse is a sex act, performed as either foreplay or as non-penetrative sex, that involves the stimulation of a man's penis by a woman's breasts and vice versa. It involves placing the penis between a woman's breasts and moving the penis up and down to simulate sexual penetration and to create sexual pleasure. It may be used as an alternative to a handjob.
Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick was an American academic scholar in the fields of gender studies, queer theory, and critical theory. Sedgwick published several books considered "groundbreaking" in the field of queer theory, including Between Men: English Literature and Male Homosocial Desire (1985), Epistemology of the Closet (1990), and Tendencies (1993). Her critical writings helped create the field of queer studies. Her works reflect an interest in a range of issues, including queer performativity; experimental critical writing; the works of Marcel Proust; non-Lacanian psychoanalysis; artists' books; Buddhism and pedagogy; the affective theories of Silvan Tomkins and Melanie Klein; and material culture, especially textiles and texture.
Betty Dodson was an American sex educator. An artist by training, she exhibited erotic art in New York, before pioneering the pro-sex feminist movement. Dodson's workshops and manuals encourage women to masturbate, often in groups.
Pepper Schwartz is an American sexologist and sociologist teaching at the University of Washington in Seattle, Washington, United States. She is the author or co-author of numerous books, magazines, and website columns, and is a television personality on the subject of sexuality.
Joan Theresa Garrity is an American author, best known as the author of The Sensuous Woman.
Lesbianism is the sexual and romantic desire between women. There are historically far fewer mentions of lesbianism than male homosexuality, due to many historical writings and records focusing primarily on men.
William Acton (1813–1875) was a British medical doctor and book writer. He was known for his books on masturbation.
Joani Blank was an American entrepreneur, writer, videographer, cohousing enthusiast, philanthropist, sex educator, and inventor in the field of sexuality. She used publishing, her sex store, and other endeavors to promote sex-positive feminism. Her papers are part of the Human Sexuality Collection at Cornell University Library.
Among the world's religions, views on masturbation vary widely. Some religions view it as a spiritually detrimental practice, some see it as not spiritually detrimental and others take a situational view. Among these latter religions, some view masturbation as allowable if used as a means towards sexual self-control, or as part of healthy self-exploration, but disallow it if it is done with motives they consider to be wrong, or as an addiction. For example, Christian denominations have different views on masturbation. Today, Roman Catholic, Eastern Orthodox, Oriental Orthodox and some Protestant Christians consider masturbation to be a sin. Many Protestant churches in Northern and Western Europe and some Protestant churches in Northern America and in Australia/New Zealand see masturbation as not a sin.
Feminist sexology is an offshoot of traditional studies of sexology that focuses on the intersectionality of sex and gender in relation to the sexual lives of women. Sexology has a basis in psychoanalysis, specifically Freudian theory, which played a big role in early sexology. This reactionary field of feminist sexology seeks to be inclusive of experiences of sexuality and break down the problematic ideas that have been expressed by sexology in the past. Feminist sexology shares many principles with the overarching field of sexology; in particular, it does not try to prescribe a certain path or "normality" for women's sexuality, but only observe and note the different and varied ways in which women express their sexuality. It is a young field, but one that is growing rapidly.
Masturbation is the sexual stimulation of one's own genitals for sexual arousal or other sexual pleasure, usually to the point of orgasm. The stimulation may involve hands, fingers, everyday objects, sex toys such as vibrators, or combinations of these. Mutual masturbation is masturbation with a sexual partner, and may include manual stimulation of a partner's genitals, or be used as a form of non-penetrative sex.
Heba Kotb is an Egyptian certified sex therapist and host of The Big Talk, a sexual advice show airing in Egypt. The first licensed sexologist in the country, Kotb bases her methods on the teachings of the Qur'an, which she says encourages healthy sexual relationships between husband and wife. She has been called: "Egypt's Dr. Ruth."
Penis envy is a stage theorized by Sigmund Freud regarding female psychosexual development, in which young girls experience anxiety upon realization that they do not have a penis. Freud considered this realization a defining moment in a series of transitions toward a mature female sexuality. In Freudian theory, the penis envy stage begins the transition from an attachment to the mother to competition with the mother for the attention, recognition and affection of the father. The parallel reaction of a boy's realization that women do not have a penis is castration anxiety.
Jewish traditions across different eras and regions devote considerable attention to sexuality. Sexuality is the subject of many narratives and laws in the Tanakh and rabbinic literature.
Saman is an Indonesian novel by Ayu Utami published in 1998. It is Utami's first novel, and depicts the lives of four sexually-liberated female friends, and a former Catholic priest, Saman, for whom the book is named. Written in seven to eight months while Utami was unemployed, Saman sold over 100,000 copies and ignited a new literary movement known as sastra wangi that opened the doors to an influx of sexually-themed literary works by young Indonesian women.
Charley Ferrer became the first Latina Doctor of Human Sexuality in the United States in 2000 after receiving her doctoral degree from the Institute for Advanced Study of Human Sexuality. She is a clinical sexologist and award-winning author of several books on sexual health, self-empowerment, and breast cancer. A pioneer in the field of sexual health and empowerment, Dr. Ferrer began her journey providing workshops on sexual health and empowerment to women in Evergreen State College and across the Pacific Northwest. Her first book, The W.I.S.E. Journal for the Sensual Woman became an international success and lead to her invitation to lecture throughout the US and Latin America; where she taught medical providers and mental health practitioners the value of respecting their patients’ sexual orientations and preferences to enable physicians to provide the best care possible.
Sexual Education of the Young Woman is an educational book, published in 1923 and written by a psychiatrist and author David H. Keller. The book provides sexual education guidelines for the girls above the age of six years old. The guidelines concern biological knowledge about the female and male bodies, discussed in the context of prevailing moral and social norms. The book is intended to be read by the young girl herself or conveyed by her parents. As such, it is not only a source of knowledge but also a parenting tool. Sexual Education of the Young Woman contains 13 chapters, each dealing with a different topic of sexual education. It has clear views on the issues of morality and social norms- women are depicted as fundamentally different from men. The author suggests that the life purpose of a woman is giving birth and raising children as well as assuring a cozy and relaxing life for her husband. However, Dr. Keller stresses the importance of proper general and sexual education, and the influence it has on the happiness of a future mother and wife. Sexual Education of the Young Woman is a part of a 10 volume collection The Sexual Education Series released in 1928.
